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Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

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Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#61

Post by kergonath »

fatjokes wrote: post #19
brianberns wrote: post #13

Here's my data point to the contrary: I entered college a few weeks short of my 17th birthday in the early 1980's. I was about 1.5 years younger than others in my class, on average. I made many good friends, but my relative lack of maturity still had a huge impact on my emotional well-being (especially when it came to dating). I'm now in my 50's and still dealing with the psychological repercussions of my parents' de…

1.5 years isn't even that much? I mean you can probably find that variance within any cohort so I doubt it was the acceleration that caused any psychological repercussions.

When you’re 15, 1.5 years is 10% of your whole life. I know I seriously struggled with being significantly younger than the others in my classes. Having gone through a PhD since then, there is no way I would have handled it well at 20.

Besides, my experience is that if you’re so bright, there are plenty of opportunities everywhere to satisfy your curiosity (or at least work on it). It does not have to be at school.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#62

Post by honkycat »

colechristensen wrote: post #46
barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do th…

Yes. Exactly. Precisely the same thing for me. I was reading at an absurdly young age.

School for me was a special sort of hell where I was able to read at a 12th grade level in 3rd grade, and yet a decade later was in class with people who could not yet read. I would stare at the clock and switch between sleeping and being insanely bored.

I'm 31 years old now and I feel I have enough life experience to call it what it was: Neglect. I was left in a corner to rot in child jail for a over a decade, during some of the most important years of my life, and constantly punished for the crime of being a bored young person whose time is being wasted.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#63

Post by MaximumYComb »

avalys wrote: post #39

Meh. I skipped 7th grade, after being in the youngest cohort in my class already (birthday in July). I've done fine I guess - went to MIT, did some startups, got paid plenty of money, and I'm pretty happy today (COVID transient aside). I thought it was cool at the time, and I was in a hurry to get out of high school, get to college, and get on with my life, so I certainly didn't object when my parents and teachers su…

That extra year you gained actually saved you from something though. You didn't have to sit in a classroom being void of stimulation for that year or later years. You were given the chance to grow intellectually instead of sit around doing not much.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#64

Post by sverona »

Disclaimer: it's late and I don't feel like SciHubbing it so I haven't read past the abstract.

My N=1 opinion is that being "highly gifted" may not cause social and emotional trauma, but it can certainly complicate unrelated trauma.

I skipped so many grades when I was a kid that they started holding me back so I wouldn't get too "out of sync" (I did junior high twice.) I got along socially with relatively little bullying. But I still have a lot of school-related trauma, especially concerning emotional regulation.

My working theory is that none of my teachers had any idea how to teach a 7-year-old in the midst of kids twice their age, so they treated me like I was twice my age, which was fine intellectually but messed me up emotionally. The emotional impact of this has absolutely nothing to do with my giftedness; it would mess any child up.

There are some postrationalists that tweet occasionally about how their educational experience messed them up similarly. Qiaochu/QC Yuan is my favorite.

Also, I'm trans and there are more of us with this story than you'd think.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#65

Post by URSpider94 »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #7
barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

Counterpoint: the general level of maturity of an individual, and in particular their emotional maturity and their social maturity, do not strongly correlate with their intellectual maturity. Someone may be advanced enough to graduate at 18 with a bachelor's degree in a technically challenging field, but lack enough self-discipline, sense of responsibilities, or basic social graces and knowledge of social codes to re…

Did you read the abstract? I’ll quote here: “Concerns about long-term social/emotional effects of acceleration for high-potential students appear to be unwarranted, as has been demonstrated for short-term effects.”

The general finding in the gifted research community is that grouping academically gifted students with their intellectual peers instead of their age peers is overall a better experience. Yes, there will be some issues with asynchronous development, but forcing students to spend their days with students who are not able to work on their level also leaves scars.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#66

Post by colechristensen »

honkycat wrote: post #62
colechristensen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do th…

Yes. Exactly. Precisely the same thing for me. I was reading at an absurdly young age. School for me was a special sort of hell where I was able to read at a 12th grade level in 3rd grade, and yet a decade later was in class with people who could not yet read. I would stare at the clock and switch between sleeping and being insanely bored. I'm 31 years old now and I feel I have enough life experience to call it what…

I wouldn't go and say I am of just of average genetic predisposition for intelligence... but really a bigger part of it is the people raising me, parents and grandparents, they taught me to read before I went to school. I don't think a child has to be particularly exceptional to learn to be able to read at 4 or 5, somebody has to go and teach them though.

And let me add to "child jail": not only was I sent somewhere to be bored for several hours a day, I was drug out of bed far before my body wanted to be awake to be sent there.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#67

Post by adrianN »

black_puppydog wrote: post #14
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it. I can't remember a single exception. In what other areas do the fastest and slowest do 13 years of work at nearly the exact same pace? The only difference allowed seems to be in AP classes, which are pretty limited in a…

> everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it Couldn't be further from the truth in Germany at least. While in my school days (primary, middle, high) this carried a huge stigma, nowadays there are some regions (think "states") that have a system where primary school "takes as long as it takes" for every child. Basically, for i in range(3): school_year(kid) if kid.is_ready(): break

I went to school in Germany met exactly one person who had to repeat a year. School in Germany is different in every state, you can't really generalize, but I don't think many children have to repeat a year

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#68

Post by mturmon »

beaner wrote: post #22
enchiridion wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. How do we change it?

You can start with supporting charter schools. They're public schools that are allowed to push out of typical restrictions and teach children in new ways. Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. They face many strong and sad political challenges. There's a recent book called Charter Schools and their Enemies that is a good read about the story of them.

This is just not an adequate summary of the decidedly mixed record of charter schools.

My kid, now 14, goes to a Los Angeles USD public school that offers specialized magnet programs for gifted and, separately, highly gifted, kids. The highly gifted program is quite accelerated and could accommodate some of the special needs you see evidence of in the comments here. (They are with their peers, not put into classes with older kids.)

On the other hand, the charter movement in LA, purports to solve the school choice problem, had a lot of encouragement from the political establishment (both R and D over probably 20 years). But — a lot of people in LA view the charter experiment as generally a failure and a distraction from actually improving the schools we have. This overview (https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_...) provides a good run-down of the sorry end of the "pro-charter" majority that prevailed in the LAUSD board.

The pro-charter board president was directing public funds to a private charter organization he was separately paid by. He had support of Reed Hastings, the Gates Foundation, and a host of well-meaning billionaires (and some not so well-meaning).

More generally, the whole concept of charters and a market in elementary education has fundamental flaws. Starting with the fact that there are no good ways for parents to really judge the effectiveness or quality of instruction.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#69

Post by adrianN »

barry-cotter wrote: post #33
taneq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fund education sufficiently that "No Child Left Behind" doesn't turn into "No Child Allowed Ahead".

In the US spending per student on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Achievement has been flat[1]. There’s no shortage of money. Practically unlimited education funding has limited effects on results[2]. It’s structural change that’s needed, like acceleration for all. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-i... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-c...

But what is that money spent on? Are there more teachers per student? Because intuitively that's what you need to provide more individualized teaching. Here in Germany a lot of money is spent on using more computers in the classroom. Blackboards are replaced with computers, students get tablets. The number of students per teacher on the other hand is unchanged or growing.
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